Little Water offers a vivid personal history of coastal cooking, from Texas to New England to Philly

In Philadelphia, we don’t often get to taste Texas redfish — or any fish for that matter — cooked “on the half shell.”

That’s chef Randy Rucker’s term for roasting a fillet of the meaty red drum with its scales still on. Scales are almost always removed from fish by a monger before delivery, but left on, they can provide an extra layer of protection to keep the meat moist. At Little Water, Rucker special orders the fish from his home state and scorches it skin side down directly over the flames, the deliberate charring adding a whiff of smoke to the plain fillet. Served for lunch, it comes dusted with fennel pollen beside a fingerling potato salad, which is also smoked. Seemingly simple, but so good.

Of all the seaside memories the chef and his wife, Amanda Rucker, evoke at Little Water, from their time in the Deep South to their stint in New England, this one is the earliest. Rucker’s grandpa, Everett “Poppy” Nicol, would cook their morning catch this way straight from the boat on the Bolivar Peninsula, where his family summered near Galveston. Seasoned with handfuls of Lawry’s before landing on the grill, “this is how I ate fish from age 2 to 17,” says the Houston-raised Rucker, who later learned that this scale-on cooking technique was an Indigenous method passed down through his mother’s side of the family.

This rustic approach offers a stark contrast to the xanthan-bound molecular gastronomy, Asian-fusion aesthetics, and fermentation techniques that have largely framed Rucker’s cooking since he arrived in Philly five years ago with River Twice, the East Passyunk chef’s counter where he’s become one of the city’s preeminent modernist chefs.

Rucker’s gift has always been to infuse his pretty plates with a dose of jam-band funk and seasonal spontaneity; they’ve never lacked for soul. The threads of nostalgia and a distinct sense of coastal places, however, are especially vivid in his food at Little Water, the Ruckers’ larger second act. This modern seafood bistro has revived the former Twenty Manning space near Rittenhouse Square with a stellar raw bar, an array of compelling cooked dishes, and a thriving bar scene that’s stoked an energy this stretch of 20th Street hasn’t seen since the glory days of Audrey Claire two decades ago. That includes a new lunch service that offers a welcome new midday alternative to Parc and other neighborhood standbys.

Rucker’s Southern roots power some of the most memorable dishes, including a mahogany brown gumbo at lunch lavished at my visit with piggy chunks of tête de cochon. There are fresh hush puppies served with the “chef’s ounce” of caviar (i.e. a 2-ounce tin), for what Rucker calls a “high brow-low brow” treat. And there’s tangy Alabama white sauce pooled atop the lovely raw oysters, which also get a splash of sugar kelp mignonette and come with a fire-red bottle of the house hot sauce on the side that I recommend you give a few shakes.

There are nods to the Ruckers' time in New England on Martha’s Vineyard and Wequetequock Cove in Connecticut, including loads of peekytoe crab salad mounded over warm hash browns draped with Maine uni. A gorgeous roasted halibut comes submerged in a chowder cloud of creamy potato foam and delicately poached clams.

There’s also a tribute to Philadelphia and its love of Italian cooking with one of Little Water’s signatures, a plate-sized swordfish Milanese cutlet fried inside a potato chip-panko crust with bitter chicories and a green peppercorn gribiche bolstered by a yeast amino butter.

The neighborhood crowd has absolutely embraced both that dish and this cheerful revamp of the long-moribund Twenty Manning. The old black paint job has been brightened with white walls and sea green subway tiles behind the raw bar. Light streams in through the cafe window walls that wrap two sides of this corner space, where outdoor seating is also set to bloom in warmer months.

As bluegrass and New Orleans brass band tunes fill the air with a rootsy soundtrack, the sound level can ramp up fast in this packed 78-seat space. The Ruckers smartly installed some acoustic wood paneling, enough that my table could still converse, but this open room and its pressed tin ceiling remain a noise-proofing challenge.

I could at least still hear my friend, our local election poll judge, tell me in passing with an eye roll that his party had waited 40 minutes past their reservation to be seated. This may be an early pitfall of visiting a popular new restaurant, but Little Water’s service team, overseen by charming manager Maggie Cook, turned a tough situation into a positive, winning over my friend’s party with a smart comeback — comping their $30 shrimp cocktail, another appetizer, plus desserts. (That precious shrimp cocktail, by the way, is already one of the best in the city, each U-10 crustacean neatly de-shelled all the way down to its tail and individually glazed with smoked catsup that’s shaded with mushroom garum, then topped with a snowfall of shaved horseradish.)

The Ruckers are determined to make Little Water a welcoming local hangout. It isn’t inexpensive, with entrees ranging from the mid-$30s on up. But the a la carte menu allows for a variety of experiences, and the check average of around $100 per person with drinks, tax, and tip, is still less than at River Twice ($130).

That same accessible approach applies to the French-centric wines, which hover reasonably around $16 a glass (though you can splurge for a premier cru glass of Champagne, a $35 pour of Gaston Chiquet). There are also plenty of intriguing bottles around $60, including a vin gris from the Lorraine and a chenin blanc from Anjou-Saumur cool enough for one of the nation’s leading wine critics, whom I spotted dining at the bar with one of the several local chefs there on a Tuesday night. Aside from its excellent renditions of classic cocktails, many infused with kitchen ingredients, Little Water also puts effort into its nonalcoholic options with drinks like the Golden Hour, a lime-tanged turmeric ginger tea dolloped with honeyed yogurt foam that I loved at lunch.

“We even have high chairs and coloring books — because I’m ready for the kids, too," says Amanda Rucker, who’s expecting her second child.

Of course, they’ll be eating swordfish nuggets and artisan grilled cheese sandwiches, Randy says.

Still, there were a handful of moments when the chef couldn’t restrain himself from overdoing it, especially when projecting a seafood connection onto dishes when it wasn’t necessary. The addition of squid ink to the fried biscuits was a gratuitous distraction from the usually phenomenal Benton’s country ham, which was cut a notch too thick and leathery for its intense saltiness. I absolutely loved Rucker’s chicken-fried quail over brussels sprouts, but half my table lost interest when it arrived covered in caviar-beaded buttermilk.

“Too much caviar” is a Rittenhouse Problem that’s not going to win much sympathy. Also, I can’t seriously fault a seafood restaurant for, um, serving a lot of seafood. But fish phobes and the shellfish averse along for the ride should be aware. Even the fantastic Berkshire pork chop with chestnut mushrooms comes atop a bisque-y sauce Américaine steeped from shellfish.

If you love seafood, Little Water is a destination-worthy experience for sustainable (and often local) seafood cooked with an impressive array of techniques. The raw bar showcases several, including a swordfish belly tartare cut from the fatty trim of the Milanese, salt-cured and rinsed in vinegar before being diced and tossed with white miso and sorrel. A rich prawn stock is turned into a jellied consommé that adds an intriguing echo of cooked crustacean to the intense sweetness of the raw shrimp and uni.

Oysters get deep-fried for a novel lunch menu take on a BLT, layering the crispy-creamy nuggets with Benton’s bacon and pickled green tomatoes — a smart offseason wink to the epic heirloom tomato sandwich with gamtae and caviar that annually draws pilgrims to River Twice in the late summer months.

The chef’s fondness for preservation also results in a stunning new mackerel dish. He juiced sweet potatoes left over from a chicken dish on the opening menu in the fall, then steeped them into a gingery ponzu puree. Months later, it makes for a gorgeous orange sunburst of brightness against a fillet of calamansi-cured Spanish mackerel with crisply torched skin. Tiny beech mushroom caps overtop deliver additional tart microbursts that cut right through each bite.

The restaurant’s showstopper, though, is quite possibly Philly’s biggest whole fish: a “jumbo” local black bass Rucker says ranges between two and four pounds. Deep-fried in seasoned rice flour to a shattering crisp with vents cut into its sides for easy plucking and laid over sea beans and rice peas in a jade green pool of herbed kombu broth, this beauty can anchor a table.

You likely won’t be coming to Little Water just for the desserts, since there are only a couple basic offerings. But the kitchen does them well, including a silky maple pudding with malted whipped cream and granola. There’s also a “toasted marshmallow” confection that changes seasonally — a fudgesicle dabbed with torched meringue in fall, now a cumulus-covered key lime tart.

It’s one final sweet note of nostalgia served with polished simplicity. And at the Ruckers' impressive second act, that combination has proven to be compelling.

261 S. 20th St., Philadelphia, Pa. 19103, 215-337-3343; littlewaterphl.com

Lunch served Tuesday through Saturday, 11 a.m.-2 p.m. Dinner Tuesday through Saturday, 5-10 p.m. Closed Sunday and Monday.

Wheelchair accessible with a collapsible ramp available for the entrance.

There are several gluten-free offerings, but not from the fryer.

Menu highlights: raw bar oysters; shrimp cocktail; swordfish tartare; hash brown with crab and uni; mackerel; chicken-fried quail; pork chop; fried bass. Lunch highlights: gumbo; crab and celeriac salad; oyster BLT.